132 Exam and Final Grade Information, Spring 2011
Here's the exam schedule for the course. These dates are also listed in the Course Listing
Book and in the course description in WebStac.
. If your final exam score is higher than any of your midterm scores, then it will replace the lowest midterm score. The material to be covered on each exam will be announced a few days ahead of time in class and on the daily assignments page.Missed Exams: Excused and Unexcused Legitimate excuses for missing an exam (such as verified illness, serious family emergencies, or conflicts with a religious holiday) in all calculus courses must be approved by Professor Blake Thornton (Cupples I, 204A, 314-935-6301), preferably in advance. Having one person approve excused absences for all sections of all the calculus courses helps to assure that all students receive fair, uniform treatment. If you receive an
excused
absence from Professor Thornton for one of the in-semester exams, please
notify me. You
will
not take a make-up exam. Instead, at the end of the semester a statistical formula called
"multiple
regression" will be used to estimate your
missing
score based on your performance on the other three exams. (The
formula
is complicated, but it takes into account the average class score on
each
exam and how far above or below the average you were on each exam you
did
take. Therefore, you're not penalized if the exam you missed was
one on which other students had high scores, and you don't gain any
advantage if you were excused from an exam on which scores were
low.) An unexcused absence from any exam receives a score of "0". |
You will mark your answers to multiple choice and T/F questions on a data card which will be machine-graded and the results posted online, usually the next day. When they're ready, you can check exam results online. Your written answers to the "free reponse" questions will be graded by hand and the results will be available within a week and also posted online. The link to exam results is also available directly from the Math Department home page.
After the machine-scored part of the exam is graded, you will have until 4 p.m. the following Monday to check with me if you think there was some problem about mismarking your answer card or other such mechanical issue.
The hand-graded pages from the exam will be returned the following week at the discussion sections. The booklet containing the multiple choice and true/false questions will be returned in an "exam return-cabinet" located under the "Math 132" sign on the first floor hall of Cupples I, sorted by first letter of the last name. (This part of the exam was machine-graded, so there are no "marks" on these pages. The questions and solutions will be available online; so picking up this booklet may not be important to you, unless you wrote a lot of calculations in it that you want to keep.) Any hand-graded exam sheets that are not picked up in the discusssion sections will also be placed in these boxes.
Copies
of Old Exams Online Many old Math
132 Exams since Fall 2000 are available online, and most of them are
available both with and without solutions. All
of these old exams
are a good source of practice problems. Just don't assume that, say,
Exam II in another semester
covers exactly the same material as will be on your Exam II, or
that
there won't be some differences for this semester's exams:
different
instructors write questions with slightly different styles and
emphases, and the textbook has sometimes changed from one year to the
next.
Your grade will be determined as follows:
Quizzes: 18%
(If your final exam score is higher than any of your midterm scores, then it will replace the lowest midterm score.)
Webwork: 10%
Midterm 1: 18%
Midterm 2: 18%
Midterm 3: 18%
Final Exam: 18%You will need a TOTAL SCORE score of 50% to pass (grade of D or better). I feel that about half the material on the tests and quizzes covers "basic competency" material so that this is a fair cutoff for getting 3 units credit for the course. If you are taking the course on a "pass/fail" basis, then you will need a grade of C- or better to earn a "passing grade" P. If there are any students who are registered just to audit the course, then I will need to assign a "grade" of L ("successful audit") or "Z" ("unsuccessful audit") at the end. You need to talk with me early in the course about what you need to do for a "successful audit." The "middle" grade in Math 131 sections in recent years has been in the vicinity of B. That could change in any given semester, but most likely it will be about the same. The letter grades in the table below are guaranteed at the end of the course. The scale for converting TOTAL SCORE into a letter grade might turn out to be more generous (or not); if it is more generous, the changes probably won't be dramatic. The scale will not be any more strict.
TOTAL SCORE GUARANTEED LETTER GRADE
(possibly with a "+" or " -" attached)90% - 100 % A 80% - 89.99% B 65% - 79.99% C 50% - 64.99% D Below 50% NCR (F)